Organizational Readiness for Implementing a Nutrition Curriculum in Early Care and Education

Background (Background, Rationale, Prior Research, and/or Theory): Preschool educational standards increasingly emphasizes nutrition education as a promising obesity prevention strategy. Success of implementation of new curricula likely vary based on the readiness of the context. An assessment of the readiness of the context may allow implementation to be more successful. Objective: This study presents results from adaptation of the Organizational Readiness for Implementation Change (ORIC) instrument to assess educators' readiness to implement the nutrition education curriculum Together, We Inspire Smart Eating (WISE). This study presents psychometric properties of the ORIC in this new setting and assessment of association with perception of barriers. Study Design, Setting, Participants, Intervention: Educators and administrators (N = 359) completed the ORIC before receiving education on the implementation of WISE. Participants were primarily lead teachers (45%) with at least some college education (64%). Outcome Measures and Analysis: The ORIC instrument (N = 12 items rated on 5-point likert scale) has demonstrated validity and reliability in health care settings. Participants were asked to rate nine potential barriers to implementation. Results: The reliability for the 12 items was (α = .97). An exploratory factor analyses (EFA, eigenvalue = 1) indicated one factor. An EFA constrained to replicate previous work with two factors was not supported. Examination of careless response include split half reliability (α = .92) and an examination of the number of repeating responses (34% used the same response for all items) suggested respondents did not distinguish items uniquely. However, the validity of the total ORIC was supported by the expected association with the number of barriers perceived by participants (r=-30). Conclusions and Implications: The ORIC had high internal consistency and demonstrated convergent validity in this sample. However, indicators of careless responding were elevated suggesting that the ORIC may benefit from a reduction of items. Alternately, it may be possible to present the items in a format that emphasizes the unique contribution of each question. Funding: NIH, FNS.